Friday, September 11, 2015

New York, London, Paris (but not Munich) - the Checkered History of Yellow Cabs

John Hertz – yes, that Hertz – is
generally credited with establishing the yellow
cab as a pop-culture icon.Hertz, a
former boxing manager and car salesman went into the cab business in 1907, but
did not launch his first fleet of yellow cabs in Chicago until August 2, 1915.His business prospered, based in part on his
revolutionary business model and perhaps also because of the distinctive look
of his yellow cabs.He soon exported his
business model into other markets and went into manufacturing; his Yellow Cab
Manufacturing Company built yellow cabs, busses and trucks.His bus and truck divisions were so
successful that General Motors purchased them in 1925.

Hertz was a good business man who
knew a good thing when he saw it, but he did not invent his business plan or
the yellow cab.In 1914, Hertz’ doctors
sent him to Europe to recover from the strain of a bitter taxi-driver strike in
Chicago:

In
Paris he learned that a short taxi ride could be had for ten cents.He investigated.

Back he
came determined to revolutionize the taxi-cab business in this country.

The “European system” operated on
a strictly cash basis and cabs picked up customers on the street or at public
stands, instead of relying on private contracts with clubs,hotels and cafes:

Although urban legend has it that
Hertz selected yellow on the recommendation of a university study he
commissioned to determine the color that would stand out the most from a
distance,[i]
no such study has ever been found.And
in any case, it doesn’t take a PhD to realize that yellow is a bright,
attention-getting color; as attested by own my cool, yellow car:

Just a few
years before Hertz unleashed yellow cabs in Chicago, in fact, some other genius painted the doors of new taxicabs in Boston
yellow for precisely that reason:

Boston
as a Taxicab Town.Boston, March 4
[(1909)]. –

The
Taxi-Service Company, the largest in the field, began operating its Berliet
cabs on September 1 of last year, and after six months of work its experience
has shown that Bostonians appreciate this quick method of getting from place to
place. . . . To distinguish them from competitors, the door of each has been
painted a dull yellow, and they can be readily recognized at some distance.

The Automobile, Volume 20, Number 9, March 4, 1909, page 377.

Boston's Yellow-door Taxicabs - 1909

Hertz could have borrowed the
idea of yellow cabs from any number of places.

The French Impressionists’
artistic revolution of the late 1800s was based, in large part, on scientific
developments in the understanding of color, psychology, and the physiology of
the eye., The pointillists carried this
“scientific” approach to to its logical conclusion – creating an entire image
of very small dots of individual colors, much like how the eye perceives color
with its array of rods and cones.Ferris Bueller and his
friend Cameron observed the effect on their day off at the Art Institute of
Chicago (at 1:30 of this
clip).The technique foreshadowed
color-dot, color-television technology by several decades and the pixels on your
video screen by more than a century.

The Pointillists and the
Impressionists were influenced by chemist Michel Eugene Chevreul’s, The Principles of Harmony and Contrast of
Colours, and their Applications to the Arts, first published in 1839.Chevreul described, among other things, his
theory of “simultaneous contrast;” in which two colors, placed side-by-side, each
affect our perception of the other one; with complementary colors creating the
most dramatic contrast.[ii]Vincent Van Gogh used the technique in his
masterpiece Café Terrace on the Place du Forum,
Arles (1888).

But although Chevreul may be
responsible for laying out the principles in an orderly, coherent manner, earlier
painters had already developed an understanding of “simultaneous contrast”
before his book was published.

In Eugène Delacroix’s The Execution of Marino Faliero
(1827), for example, Delacroix used violet shadows instead of black to create contrast
with the prominent yellows used throughout the painting.According to Delacroix’s contemporary,
Alexandre Dumas (of The Three Musketeers
and The Count of Monte Cristo fame),
Delacroix first developed his theory of color contrast while painting Marino Faliero – he was inspired by . .
. (wait for it . . . ) a yellow cab:

“I
do not know whether any, among the persons who hear me, may recollect having
seen, at this period [(while painting Marino Faliero
(1827))], canary-yellow cabs – that
is, of the fiercest (la plus farouche) yellow that can be seen.Delacroix stopped short before the body of
his cab; it was a yellow like that which he wanted; but in the position where
the carriage was placed, what gave it that dazzling tone?It was not the tone itself, it was the
shading which made it come out.But
these shadings were violet.Delacroix
had no further occasion to go to the Louvre; he paid the cab and went upstairs
to his room: he had caught his effect.”

When Delacroix cancelled his
yellow-cab cab ride to the Louvre in 1827, yellow cabs had already been a
long-standing feature of French culture; if not on the street, then at least in
the theater.

Cabriolet Jaune

One of the big hits of fall 1798
season at Paris’ Theatre de l’Opera Comique National
was Tarchi and Segur’s,
Le cabriolet jaune ou Le phénix
d'Angoulême (The Yellow Cab or the
Phoenix of Angoulême).The star of the show was renowned French
tenor, Jean Elleviou.The story involved a nobleman, a servant, two
girls, jealousy, mistaken identity, and two yellow cabs.I am not a French speaker, but that is the
gist of what I could get out of the GoogleTranslate.I also could not tell whether these were cabs
for hire or private buggies of the cabriolet style.

The French word cabriolet is the source of the English
word cab.Cabriolet is used in English
too, to designate a specific type of horse-drawn carriage. Apparently, cabriolet-style wagons were used
as conveyances for hire with sufficient frequency that the word came to mean a
vehicle for hire, and in the shortened form became, cab. In German, Cabriolet designates a convertible
car – as in Porsche
Cabriolet.

Yellow Cabs in
Paris

In the 1880s, Parisians could
choose from two different tones of yellow on their cabs:

Cabs
for hire are stationed, as in London, in all parts of Paris.The greater part of them belong to three
companies.Green cabs are generally
those of the Compagnie Generale, who own over 5,000; pale yellow cabs belong to
the Compagnie Urbaine; and deep yellow cabs to the Compagnie Camille.

Cassel’s Illustrated Guide to Paris, 1884, page 122.

An item from a London newspaper
referred to the yellow cabs of Paris as somehow “democratic”:

The Asheville Citizen, February 14, 1886, page 3.

Yellow cabs were not confined to
France.There were yellow cabs in
Germany and London as well.

Democracy in action?

Germany

Frankfurt

A
green parasol was left behind in a yellow cab on Saturday evening between 9
and 10 o’clock. Its return is requested.

Similar advertisements showed up
on several occasions during the ensuing few years, suggesting that yellow cabs may
have been a fairly common site in Frankfurt in the mid-1800s.

Weimar

German author Gabriele Reuter (born
in 1859) was popular during her lifetime, but largely unknown today.In her 1921 autobiography[iv],she relates the story of her arrival in Weimar
as a young woman.When she stepped into
a yellow cab (gelbe Droschke) at the railroad station and gave the driver her
aunt’s address; he refused to move.Then
another customer stepped into the same yellow cab, lit a cigarette and asked
the driver to take him to the Russian hotel.Remembering her mother’s advice about stranger-danger out in the big-bad
world, she asked the gentleman to get out; it was her cab.He just laughed at her.Eventually, the yellow cab took off, first
dropping the second customer at the Russian hotel, and then went on its merry
way.When her aunt finally caught up
with her, she learned that the yellow cabs were more in the nature of an
airport shuttle than a cab; you purchased a single seat, and if it was full,
you could go all over town before reaching your desired address.All of the cabs in that service were
apparently yellow.

New York

1884

New York may have gotten its
first taste of yellow cabs in 1884 with William Vanderbilt’s[v]
fleet of “black and tans” or “yellow cabs.”The new service offered revised, more predictable, and generally cheaper
fare schedule; shaking up the cab-for-hire establishment much like Uber in more
recent years:

THE
BLACK AND TAN CABS

Hackmen,
Alarmed at the Innovation, Threaten a War in Rates.

The
hackmen at the Grand Central Depot are somewhat agitated over the yellow-banded
innovations that are whisking over town.It was noticeable yesterday that more than half of the incoming
passengers inquired for the 25-cent cabs.The private cabmen admitted a large falling off in patronage.

It
was understood that the new cabs would keep on the move and not occupy stands,
and that the drivers would not solicit patronage.But bright and early yesterday morning two yellow
cabs
took up their stand opposite the Grand Central Depot, and the drivers elbowed
their way into the ranks of the regulars and picked up loads before the others
caught a fare.

The Sun (New York), April 3, 1884, page 1.

Yellow impostors soon followed;
but without the same cheap rates:

CABMEN
TRY YELLOW PAINT

Imitation
Black-and-Tans Seeking Whom they may Devour at Schedule Rates.

A
young man swallowed a cocktail at the Windsor Hotel bar on Thursday morning
shook hands with his companion, and said he had an engagement to breakfast with
friends at Delmonico’s.He went outside,
felt in his pocket, and waited fifteen minutes until a yellow and black cab
came along.The cab pulled up at his
hail.“Glad I met you,” the young man
said to the driver, as he stepped into the cab.“These new cabs are great things when a fellow’s strapped.”

The
liveried driver smiled in a friendly way, but said nothing, and drove rapidly
to Delmonico’s.Here, his fare was
tendered him, two dimes and a nickel.

“Nixy,”
said the driver.“Dollara mile.”

“Why,
it’s a yellow cab,” protested the customer.

“Some
cabs is yellow cab,” protested the customer.

“Some
cabs is yellow,” said the driver.“Matter of taste.Some is
green.Fare’s a dollar, sir.No cut rates aboard this institution.”

“Oh,
yes,” said one of Ryerson & Brown’s agents, in their stable at 6 West
Forty-fifth street last night, “we are beginning to get complaints of this
sort; but they are not against our men.These fellows who overcharge are what we call ‘the buckers.’ At least
five men who own cabs of their own have been painting the running gear and the
lower half of the body yellow, in imitation of ours.They haven’t succeeded in getting the fine
shade of canary, however, that we have on ours.”

At
the Grand Central depot there were forty cabs in line last night.Not a black-and-tan was to be seen.“The York Cab Company takes in their cabs at
sunset,” said a hack driver, “and that gives us a show.But these ‘bucker’ fellows stay out all night
like the rest of us, and beat us out of many a fare.There’s only five or six of them altogether,
and we let them know last night they couldn’t hang around here.They’re worse than the Ryerson fellows a
blamed sight.We don’t want either kind
around here.”

The Sun (New York), April 12, 1884, page 1.

New York Times, June 22, 1884.

The competition forced some
companies to change their rate structure:

MORE
CHEAP CABS.

The
New-York Cab Association, having adopted the cheap rates of fare, has added 25
new cabs to its stock and is prepared to offer the public quick and comfortable
transit and guarantee it against extortion. . . .The association has two classes of cabs, the
ordinary hack cab and the yellow cab.The black cab, when waiting for a fare, is distinguishable from other
black cabs by a small sign on the roof over each door, bearing the name of the
association, and the rates, “25 cents per mile, $1 for the first hour, and 75
cents for each additional hour.”As soon
as one of these cabs is engaged these signs are taken in by the driver.

The New York Times, September 23, 1884.

The company that owned the yellow
cabs eventually won an injunction protecting its trademark look:

The
judge explained that he did not mean to hold that the company was entitled to
any exclusive property in color or in words, but he held that it “has so far
established a trade-mark in the words and color and device, as they are
combined and used, that the plaintiff is entitled to call upon a court of
equity for protection against imitations designed to mislead the public, and to
deprive the plaintiff of its profits.”Everybody who has had anything to do with the drivers of the bogus cheap
cabs knows that, while they will usually accept the established low rates, the
majority of them will take advantage of strangers or persons whom they know to
be in too great a hurry to lose time parleying with them or hunting for another
vehicle.It is not logical to expect
fair dealing from a man who seeks patronage under false pretense.The public will rejoice in every decision
against the bogus black-and-tans.

Harper’s Weekly, Volume 28, Number 1451, October 11, 1884, page
673.

But despite their early success,
and the appeal of the cheaper rates, the yellow cabs seem to have disappeared by
about 1887.About twenty-five years
later during another period of cab-rate reform, a reporter waxed nostalgic
about the “Old Yellow Cab age” when cabs were affordable.[vi]

London

If the punch line of this joke is
any indication, yellow cabs appear to have been familiar a familiar sight in
London in 1868:

Flies in Amber. – Yellow Cabs.

There appear to have been yellow
cabs in London in 1882 as well; an American brought one back for personal use:

Mrs.
Whittier of Boston, the heiress of the eccentric Mr. Eben Wright, drives about
a good deal, and is quite a prominent person just now.She imported quite early in the season a
regular London four-wheeled cab, painted a bright yellow, but, in point of
construction and finish, as a wax candle to a farthing rushlight in comparison
with the wretched hacks that patrol London streets.This is used to convey guests and their
belongings to and from the trains, and it made quite a sensation in Boston on
its first appearance there.

The Sun (New York), August 13, 1882, page 5.

Fifteen years later, when the
first electric cabs were tested and approved for use in London, they were
primarily yellow:

The old
style of London cabman is doomed – there is no doubt about that.Not only has he to contend with the taximeter[vii],
but the yellow electrical cabs after a brief interval of
retirement are to burst upon the streets once more to-day to the number of
eighty.London is so overdone with cabs
that the addition of eighty new ones to the existing total is a serious matter,
especially when the fourscore are of a novel and attractive kind.These electric “hackney carriages” are
comfortable, and have only two drawbacks – they are (or were) a trifle noisy,
and they attract rather too much public attention.The works, we understand, have now been
simplified, and as they increase in number and familiarity the occupants will
not get stared at quite so unmercifully.

New York Tribune, June 12, 1899, page 8.

Yellow cabs, or at least
partially yellow cabs, were also apparently common in London in the 1910s. In 1913, a judge ruled in favor of a plaintiff
in a trademark dispute involving green-and-yellow cabs in use since at least
1909.The plaintiff prevailed not
because their colors were distinctive (green and yellow cabs were “common to
the trade”), but because the defendant had copied their initials:[viii]

I think
it is clear that Messrs. Du Cros were the first persons to put the green and
yellow cabs on the market.In course of
time other persons, apparently seeing that they were attractive and pleased the
public, have painted their cabs green and yellow too.There are a substantial number of people now
who have green and yellow cabs; the Defendant is only one of them.On the other hand when the Defendant paints
his cabs in colours so nearly like the colours which the Plaintiffs have used,
he must be exceedingly careful not to copy the Planitiffs in other details. . .
. I base my judgment not upon the green and yellow, which upon the evidence I
must now take to be common to the trade, but upon the association of those
elements with the “M. G.” painted in a deceptive manner.

New York was the scene of another
trademark dispute involving yellow cabs in 1913.

New York, New York

1909

The article about Boston’s
yellow-door taxis excerpted at the beginning of this article also suggested
that the same company had cabs in New York City in late-spring 1909:

. . .
has just established a branch company in New York City, taking over the service
of the Waldorf-Astoria, the Holland House and five smaller hotels.It is operating sixty automobiles and two
hundred horses in caring for the business there, and the horses will be
displaced as fast as the cabs can be secured.The cabs have proven much more economical and efficient than the
horse-drawn vehicles.

The Automobile, Volume 20, Number 9, March 4, 1909, page 377.

There is no confirmation that those
cabs were yellow; but it certainly seems possible.

And even if those cabs were not
yellow, an entire fleet of yellow cabs took to the streets of New York in June
of 1909:

The new “Yellow Cabs” looked like this (although with a different paint job):

One of the new yellow cabs’
selling points was that they were equipped with reliable taximeters (the device
that automatically calculates the fare based on time, distance, and a per-use
fee) which were apparently still a novelty in New York City:

President C. F.
Wyckoff of the W. C. P. Taxicab Company, which operates the yellow cabs, says the
company lays great stress on the accuracy of its taximeters, which led to an
interesting wager recently, . . . resulting in two yellow cabs being telephoned
for.

It was decided to run
them in a straight course on West End avenue for twenty blocks, the W. C. P.
taxicab representative agreeing to pay the wager if the meters on the two cabs
did not register exactly the same fare.The result was a thorough conversion of the skeptical club member, as
both cabs totaled exactly the same fare.

The Sun (New York), June 20, 1909, page 11.

The same company, or its
successor, was still in business in 1912 when it sought injunctions to restrain
members of the Independent Taxicab Owners Association from painting their cabs
yellow:

After hearing
argument Justice Blanchard reserved decision in the case, but said that it was
his opinion from the argument that no one has a right to appropriate to himself
yellow or any other color and seek to have the law construe that he has a
property right in the color.

B.
H. Holden, counsel for the Yellow Taxi Company, said that his client adopted
the color in 1909 when everybody else had ridiculed it, and that since then the
company has built up a prosperous business, which has led the owners of
independent machines to imitate the color to lead the public to believe the
machines were the plaintiff’s. . . .

You
are entitled to relief if you can show deceit, but not for the use of the same
color,” said the court.

The Sun (New York), May 10, 1912, page 11.

The company brought a whole slew of
similar cases throughout the next two years; mostly with similar results:

Ultimately, however, the Yellow
Cab Company ran into some legal troubles of its own involving graft (free rides
to politicians and city officials) and operating without a proper business
license (which they got away with by giving away free rides).

[iii]
See also, The Sun, May 26, 1912,
Magazine Section, page 4, column 4 (Unable to get the brilliancy he desired, he
was once more going to the Louvre to consult Rubens when he happened to observe
the black and yellow body of the cab that had been called.The black beside the yellow was not black,
but tinged with mauve.Here was the law
in germ – the bright yellow compels the eye to see its complementary color in
the adjacent space.If you want your
yellow to look its brightest put its complementary beside it, for that will
force the eye to see yellower.).

[vii]
A “taximeter” is the device that automatically calculates the fare based on
time, distance, and a per-use fee.The
taximeter was invented in the 1870s, but was not commercially viable until the
1890s.They were used widely in Europe
during the 1890s and only came into use slowing in the United States during the
early 1900s.